urban Indian personality and the

’cu Iture of poverty‘

THEODORE D. GRAVES-University of California, Los Angeles

introduction

In the complex interweaving o f socioeconomic status and ethnicity which constitutes

the fabric of American society, the lower class i s disproportionately made up of minority
group members with some measure o f “cultural” distinctiveness. Two complementary
explanations of this phenomenon have usually been offered by spokesmen for the
dominant strata. The first underlies our faith in the American “melting pot” and i t s
capacity for ultimately absorbing these minorities; the second was developed as an
explanation for i t s failure.
(1) The Assimilation Theory: Minority groups bring to the American scene distinct
historical traditions and their attendant diversity in life-styles parts of which are

‘%ulture of poverty” theorists contend that the marginal socio-

economic position occupied by many minority groups within our
society is the result of a self-perpetuatingpoverty “way of life, ’’ which
includes certain characteristic personality attributes such as a tendency
to live for the moment rather than to plan ahead, fatalism, and a lack of
ambition. This >itUdy brings empirical evidence to bear on this thesis as
it applies to one minority group of urban poor: Navajo Indians living in
Denver, Colorado. The data are drawn from interviews with 259 male
Navajo migrants, supplemented by records from the Bureau of Indian
Affairs which sponsors their relocation, police files, employer inter-
views, participant observation, and case studies. Psychometric
procedures were constructed specifically for this study to measure three
relevant features of Navajo personality which contrast with the
dominant white middle class: time perspective, locus o f control, and
achievement motivation. The reliability and validity of these procedures
are discussed in detail. Within this Indian group, no association was
found between a middle-class orientation on these measures and six
indices o f economic achievement in the city. Rather than contributing
to economic success, these psychological traits appear to serve migrants
as a basis for evaluating their economic failures. This is seen in the
strong relationship between these personality attributes and arrest rates,
primarily for drunkenness, among those with the poorest wages and
most unemployment. In conclusion, the acquisition of middle-class
personality without access t o middle-class goals appears to create
additional problems for lower-class groups. Some applied implications
are discussed.

urban Indian personality 65

 incompatible with “success” within the dominant urban-industrial complex. Con-
sequently, they occupy the lowest rungs of the socioeconomic ladder until such time as
they can acquire mainstream American beliefs and values.
(2) The Culture of Poverty Theory: Those who find themselves in the grips of the
poverty class, for whatever historical reasons, acquire a set o f beliefs and values congruent
with that status and the limitations it imposes. This results in a self-perpetuating poverty
“way of life,” passed on from generation to generation, which serves as a major barrier to
economic improvement and social mobility.
The “assimilation” theory i s a long-standing one which has served as a major guide to
policy formation with regard to the treatment o f ethnic minorities within the United
States, whether they are indigenous, such as American Indians and many Spanish-
Americans, or migrants from abroad. The “culture o f poverty” theory i s a more recent
overlay, but one with identical policy implications. Both prescribe therapeutic efforts
aimed a t changing the “way of life” of those in poverty conditions. The main vehicle of
such change has been seen as the public educational system, which has been
supplemented by the efforts o f a variety o f minor agencies, such as were recently
embodied in the “war on poverty.”
Recent critics of these explanations of minority group poverty and their policy
implications have argued that they divert national attention away from attempts to deal
with the structural conditions of poverty and place the major blame for their
impoverished conditions on the poor themselves (Rainwater 1968; Valentine 1968).
Poverty, they argue, is not a problem of the poor, but of the larger society which created
and perpetuates their impoverished status. The purpose o f this paper is to bring empirical
data to bear on this controversy, a t least as it applies to one minority group of urban
poor: Navajo Indian migrants in Denver, Colorado.

American Indians and the “culture of poverty“

As a group, American Indians are probably the poorest and most disfavored ethnic
minority in the United States today. This statement needs l i t t l e documentation. The press
regularly reports figures such as the following: in 1969 the Indian unemployment rate
was eight to ten times the national average, and individual incomes were less than half the
national “poverty level.” One official estimated that the average Navajo Indian on his
reservation sees about $400 in cash each year, including welfare payments. Even the
“oil-rich’’ Indians of Oklahoma are reported to have a 55 percent unemployment rate and
an average family income o f only $1,200 per year (Steiner 1968:200).
The miseries which such poverty produces are compounded by poor education and
poor health. Indian illiteracy rates are among the highest in the nation; their average
education is about eight years, and 50 percent of their children drop out of school before
completing the twelfth grade-over double the national rate. Infant mortality rates are
also double the national average, influenza and pneumonia are three times the national
average, tuberculosis is still four times the national average, gonorrhea is five times, hepa-
t i t i s is eight times, strep throat is ten times, meningitis is twenty times, and dysentery is
one hundred times the average rate among other Americans.
Not surprisingly, many Indian families live almost exclusively on “welfare,” provided
either by the states or their tribes in the form o f monthly “per capita” payments. All too
often they are “multi-problem” families as well, with alcohol at the center o f a cluster of

66 american ethnologist
related difficulties: intrafamilial conflict and marital instability, child neglect, poor
health, delinquency, poor school attendance and early drop-out.
“Culture of poverty” notions are frequently evoked to help account for the
perpetuation o f this Indian social and economic marginality over generations, despite the
concerted efforts o f missionaries, social workers, teachers, and government agents to
promote their assimilation. Indian problems, these observers argue, have their roots in
certain stereotypic Indian personality traits: “lack o f ambition,” “inability to plan
nhead,” “hedonism,” “fatalism,” and “dependency.” Whether these traits are a product
of their “cultural” traditions or o f their contemporary socioeconomic position, they are
assumed to he!p perpetuate that position.
Consequently, various agencies working with Indian people, particularly the Bureau o f
Indian Affairs and i t s schools, focus a good deal o f attention on modifying the
personality traits o f their Indian students. In a variety of ways these predominantly
middle-class teachers deliberately attempt to promote attitudes and values which they
believe t o be crucial for the off-reservation adjustment o f their pupils. To a casual visitor
at an Indian boarding school, an obvious indication o f this fact i s to be seen in the slogans
and posters which students are encouraged to construct and learn: “The way to kill time
i s t o work it to death.”
Although this thesis i s accepted as self-evident among these representatives o f the
dominant society, it must be cornsidered problematic by the social scientist. If modal
Indian personality does differ from modal Anglo personality, are these differences
causally related to poorer job performance and the host of social problems, particularly
drunkenness, which characterize American Indian life? Or i s the association a common
dnd largely adaptive response to the structural conditions under which they live?

the setting and the sample

Despite a life expectancy o f only forty-four years, Indians are in no sense “vanishing
Americans.” Since the turn o f the century their numbers have been steadily increasing.
Between 1950 and 1960, according to the federal census, their population growth rate
averaged 2.5 percent per year, in comparison with 1.7 percent for the country as a whole.
Even if we accept these figures, which are probably conservative, Indians now constitute
one of the youngest and fastest-growing groups in the United States. This compounds
their social and economic difficulties by placing additional pressures on already meager
reservation resources.
One solution i s migration, and American Indians have been leaving their reservation
homes in search o f better job opportunities since before the turn of the century. This
trend was reversed during the Depression, but was given fresh impetus by the World War
I I . This was followed in the early fifties by a government-sponsored “relocation” program
designed to promote Indian assimilation and solve the economic problems o f the
reservations by encouraging Indian migration to major urban centers (Officer 1971).
Thousands o f Indians have taken advantage of this opportunity since the program’s
inception. The program offers a number o f inducements and services, including
transportation to one of about a dozen designated urban centers for the migrant and his
family, employment placement, job counseling and financial assistance until the migrant
i 5 settled, and emergency relief thereafter within the limits set by the law and the budget.
Denver, Colorado, one o f these Indian relocation centers, has had an Office of
Employment Assistance run by the BIA since 1952. The relocation program was first

urban Indian personality 67

 tested on the Navajo reservation, and over the years Navajos have constituted
approximately a quarter of all Indian relocatees. Because of i t s proximity to their
reservation, roughly one-third of the Indians migrating to Denver are Navajos, and they
constitute the largest single tribe in the city.
Between 1963 and 1966, my students and I at the University of Colorado conducted
an interdisciplinary study among these Navajo migrants with the object o f understanding
factors associated with the quality of their urban adjustment (Graves 1966). During this
period essentially all Navajo males who had come to the city for direct employment
(rather than vocational training) were systematically interviewed (N = 135). In addition,
during three summers o f fieldwork on the Navajo reservation a random sample composed
o f one-third of the former Denver migrants who had returned home were also tracked
down and interviewed (N = 124).* This yielded a total interviewed sample of 259 and
permitted reliable inferences about the characteristics o f the entire group of Navajo
migrants to Denver during the prior ten years of the BIA relocation program. In addition,
several smaller comparison samples were interviewed: working-class whites occupying jobs
similar to those held by Navajos (N = 41), Spanish-American migrants to Denver
(N = 139),3 and young Navajo males living on their reservation (N = 115).
Our main instrument was a lengthy formal interview o f about two hours duration, for
which each subject was paid five dollars. Besides factual material on their backgrounds,
training, and complete job histories, migrants were asked questions about their social
relationships in Denver, their recreational activities, reservation contacts, and medical
problems (Alfred 1965), and they were tested on their English language facility. A series
o f specially designed psychometric procedures were also employed, which tapped their
attitudes, values, beliefs, and expectations. Three o f these will be discussed in detail
below. In addition, all migrant records kept by the BIA were ab~tracted,~ as were police
records for these Indians and the Anglo and Spanish comparison groups.’ Interviews and
ratings were collected from virtually all Denver employers hiring Navajos (Weppner
1968). Participant observation o f Navajo recreational activities in Denver was conducted
(Snyder 1968), and in-depth case studies were made of representative migrant individuals
and families (McSwain 1965; Ziegler 1967; McCracken 1968). Thus a wealth o f both
qualitative and quantitative data i s available to draw on.
Even casual observations o f these urban Indians revealed their marginal position in
the city. Despite the fact that 86 percent had received some form o f vocational training,
about half could command no better than manual day-labor jobs. The median wage for the
entire group was only $1.35 per hour, which amounts to $2,700 per year-well below the
official “poverty level.” Job turnover and unemployment rates were high, and half
returned home to their reservation within six months.
But the most striking factor in their poor urban adjustment, and one which we could
not avoid facing, was drinking (Graves 1970, n.d.b). Whether we spoke with their
employers, various social agencies, or the Indians themselves, drunkenness was seen as
their foremost adjustment problem and a major source of their economic difficulties as
well (McSwain 1965; Weppner 1968). Therefore, any aspect o f Indian personality which
supported or promoted drinking behavior could be considered an important factor in the
perpetuation of their economic and social marginality.

specific hypotheses
The “culture o f poverty” formulation includes a large array o f personality attributes
which could be studied empirically, such as strong feelings o f marginality, dependency,

68 american ethnologist
 dnd inferiority, a weak ego structure, and confusion over sex role identification (see the
introduction to Lewis 1966). For the present study, however, I selected three attributes
which appeared to occupy a central position in most discussions of the contrast between
middle- and lower-class personality: future time perspective, internal locus of control, and
achievement motivation. These were conceived as representing the three major terms in a
generalized decision model, one o f several alternative theoretical models guiding our
original project formulation (Gr‘wes 1966). An extended future time perspective-the
tendency to look ahead, to plan and save for the future, and generally to work for
long-range goals (including the so-called “ability” to delay gratification)-was conceived
as the joint product of a belief that such activity would be efficacious because the
outcome of these efforts i s largely under one’s own control (internal locus o f control),
and a strong dedication to the kinds o f rewards which only such effort can yield (high
achievement motivation).
Although there has been abundant theory and research on time perspective, locus of
control, and need-achievement, it has been largely compartmentalized into separate
research traditiom6 Yet all three concepts appear to occupy a comparable level of
abstraction: high-order psychological attributes which have a degree o f cross-situational
dpplicability and therefore help produce the relative consistency in behavioral choices
which we recognize by the word “personality.” This formulation was an attempt to seek
a basis for their theoretical integration around the problem o f the core middle-class
personality syndrome so important in the literature on modernization, urbanization, and
industrialization ( I nkeles 1960).
These three personality traits were also selected because they appear t o represent
dspects of traditional Navajo “culture” which differ sharply from the dominant
characteristics o f the larger society within which these Indians are embedded. Navajos, I
had been taught, do not emphasize individual achievement (Kluckhohn and Leighton
1946:300-302; Leighton and Kluckhohn 1947:172), are present-time oriented, and
accept man’s role as one o f adjusting to nature rather than dominating it (Kluckhohn and
Strodtbeck 1961). A t the time the Navajo Urban Relocation Research Project was being
formulated, “culture of poverty” ideas were just emerging and appeared to be an
important anthropological contribution to our understanding of minority group
problems. If these notions were accurate, I reasoned, then traditional Navajo personality
traits should be reinforced by their marginal socioeconomic position within American
society, thereby blocking their assimilation and contributing to the perpetuation of their
economic and social marginality.
Two specific hypotheses, derived directly from the “culture o f poverty” literature, can
now be formulated. Because the typical lower-class and traditional Navajo personality was
seen as a barrier to economic success, and thereby to social mobility and ultimate
assimilation, it was expected that: (1) Those migrants with an extended future time
perspective, strong feelings of personal control over their destinies, and high achievement
motivation will do significantly better economically in the city than those who do not
possess this syndrome of middle-class personality traits. The effect of these personality
attributes on drunkenness and arrest rates, I reasoned, should be double-barrelled: not
only would they lead to better job performance, and therefore lower motivation to get
drunk, but they would also provide psychological controls against heavy drinking by
helping the migrant become aware of and take into consideration the long-range
consequences of his acts. Drunkenness may be immediately gratifying, but it also
interferes with the attainment o f more substantial, future goals. By bringing these

urban Indian personality 69

 long-range goals into consciousness and imbuing them with high value, I anticipated that
these three personality traits would also mitigate against drunkenness. This should further
contribute to the benign upward spiral which leads ultimately to economic and social
assimilation. Thus my second specific hypothesis: (2) By contributing to improved
economic achievement and by providing psychological controls against heavy drinking,
this syndrome o f personality traits will also be related to lower rates of drunkenness and
arrest in the city.

the cross-cultural measurement of personality attributes

Before we proceed to a test of these hypotheses, I would like t o interject a

methodological footnote. Systematic testing within cross-cultural field settings of
hypotheses containing psychological variables i s a relatively rare and hazardous enterprise.
Not only are there all the uncontrollable sources o f inferential ambiguity inherent in any
natural field situation (Campbell and Stanley 1966), but there are problems in employing
the battery of personality measures accumulated and standardized over years of work in
public schools and introductory psychology classes. One o f the major criticisms of certain
“culture and personality” research i s that the psychometric procedures used were
inappropriate-in format, content, administration, or scoring-for the setting in which
they were employed. When working cross-culturally, each measure must be developed
anew and grounded in the particular context in which the research is being conducted.
This i s an expensive and time-consuming task, one which limits the number of variables
which can reasonably be investigated.
The question of the validity o f these measures i s also more of an issue and places a
particular burden of responsibility on the researcher for i t s demonstration. The
measurement o f personality attributes, even within our own, familiar society, i s fraught
with difficulty. How much more so it becomes when we attempt to work with people
whose cultural heritage and stereotypic response patterns are not so automatically a t the
researcher’s command. I will therefore spend more time discussing the construction,
reliability, and validity of the measures we used among Navajo migrants than might
otherwise seem appropriate in a journal article.

measuring time perspective

The first of the three personality attributes which constitute the focus o f this paper,
future time perspective, was measured by means of the “Life Space Sample.” This
technique, which I adapted for cross-cultural use about ten years ago, i s based on earlier
research among schizophrenics by Wallace (1956), and has now been applied in a variety
of settings (Graves 1962, 1967; Shybut 1965; Jessor, Graves, Hanson, and Jessor 1968).
What I wanted was an indication o f how far into the future a subject tends to think, or
how much of the future i s maintained as part o f his current psychological “life space.” He
is asked, therefore, t o look ahead and tell us five things that he thinks he will do or thinks
will happen to him. After these have been collected, he i s asked for each one in turn how
long from now he expects the events to occur.7 These data can be scored in a variety of
ways, but what has proved simplest and empirically most satisfactory is to calculate the
median time from the present at which these events are expected to occur. This score
then becomes a summary o f the “extension” o f the entire sample of events.

70 american ethnologist
 This task appears at first glance to be a simple one for the subjects. And for
Anglo-Americans indeed it is; they can almost always rattle o f f five or even ten events
with little delay. But for the Navajo, as for other Indian groups tested, it has proved
painfully difficult, and over 70 percent were unable to complete the task. “We Navajo are
not like your weather forecasters,” one dourly remarked. This isnot simply a matter o f poor
fluency in English. The correlation between the number of future events a subject could
mention and a measure of his Eriglish fluency, based on the length of his response to six
TAT-type pictures (discussed below), was close to zero (.07), as was true of a measure of
his English grammatical accuracy (also .07). And a low but statistically significant
correlation with a highly reliable test o f his aural comprehension’ is nearly wiped out
when we control for the migrant’s years o f formal education. Clearly, performance on
this measure o f future time perspective i s about as free from the influence of differential
English language skills as we could hope to achieve.
This typical difficulty many Indians have in completing the Life Space Sample has
implications for the general issue o f Indian time perspective. But it also creates
measurement problems. Median time perspective scores for these migrants had con-
sequently to be calculated on the basis o f a very limited sample o f future events, an
average of approximately three. Fortunately, however, there i s only a weak correlation
between the number o f events n,amed and the amount of time before the median event is
expected to occur (-.13), so that scores based on different sample sizes are relatively
comparable. Nevertheless, this has probably resulted in greater instability in these scores
than would have been desirable m d had perhaps contributed to poorer predictive power
than might otherwise have been obtained.
In general, the internal homogeneity o f this procedure appears to be fairly good. In a
group of forty-two Indian high school students (mainly Navajos) from whom ten events
were collected in 1961, the sample o f events named by each student was split into two
parts by taking every other event mentioned, like an odds-evens reliability test. The
correlation between the two resulting extension scores was .71. An extension score based
on the first five events mentioned correlated .82 with that for the entire ten-event sample.
This is roughly comparable to but somewhat higher than what was found among groups
of forty-seven Anglo and forty-two Spanish students in the same high school, where these
correlations averaged .6.
In the Tri-Ethnic study in which this measure was first used, ethnic group differences
in time perspective were substantial at both the high school and adult levels, with Indians
consistently having the shortest time perspective o f the three groups (Jessor, Graves,
Hanson, and Jessor 1968). In the high school, for example, sixty-nine Anglo students had
an average future extension score of 3.5 years, the fifty-one Spanish students averaged 2.5
years, while the sixty-nine Indians (two-thirds of them Navajos) averaged only 1.5 years.
(Standard deviations ranged from 2.1 to 2.5 years.) These Indian scores are very similar to
those we obtained in the Denver study, where the future extension score among Navajo
migrants averaged 1.6 years (s.d. = 2.1 years). In the present study there were also
significant Anglo-Indian differences in the same direction (p<.OI), with Anglo having a
mean future extension score o f 3.1 years (s.d. = 2.7 years). Thus the ability of this
measure to differentiate among ethnic groups in the manner expected from ethnographic
observations appears to be well established.
Evidence for the convergent validity o f this measure, based on i t s relationship to
alternative measures of the same concept, is less firm. In the Tri-Ethnic high school study
there was a weak but statistically significant correlation between this measure and an

urban Indian personality 71

 independent measure o f delay o f gratification (r = .20), but the correlation with another
measure of time perspective based on a story completion task did not achieve significance
(r = .14), nor did it correlate strongly with an eight-item “planning index” (.lo). These
operationally independent measures o f time perspective were not employed in the adult
half of that project and, given the multitude o f other things we were trying to do, were
not attempted in the present study either.
My major approach to the issue of the validity of this measure of time perspective, and
one which I will apply to the other psychometric procedures discussed in this essay as
well, i s derived from notions o f “construct validity” (Cronbach and Meehl 1955; Jessor
and Hammond 1957; Loevinger 1957). The basic idea i s that a measure is best validated
by showing that it relates to a system of other measures in ways which make theoretical
sense. Empirical correlations then serve a dual purpose: they validate the measures being
used at the same time that they t e s t theoretical hypotheses about relationships among the
underlying concepts being measured. Of course, i f no substantively significant and
theoretically meaningful pattern of relationships emerges, the researcher is left in doubt
as to whether the cause is poor measurement or poor theory. But that is always the case.

measuring locus of control

A belief in internal, or personal control over one’s destiny was measured by means of a
modified version o f the matched choice instrument developed for the same purpose by
the Tri-Ethnic staff (Jessor, Graves, Hanson, and Jessor 1968:297-299 and Appendices 2
and 3). This i s similar to the type of measure which has generally been used by Rotter
and his associates in their research on this concept (Rotter 1966).
Basically, the technique involves presenting the respondent with two simple
statements, roughly matched for social desirability, one of which expresses a philosophy
of personal control and the other o f fatalism, or external control. For example, one item
reads: (1) When I make plans, I am almost certain that I can make them work, or (2) I
have usually found that what i s going to happen will happen regardless of my plans. The
respondent is then asked to choose which statement he believes is truer or more closely
approximates his own personal philosophy. In the form used in this study some items
were added to try a slightly modified and more concrete format. A situation i s presented
with two alternative explanations, and the subject i s asked to choose which seems truer to
him. For example, suppose a Navajo gets picked up by the police. (1) Does this often
happen when he hasn’t done anything wrong? or (2) Has he probably done something to
deserve it?
Item analysis o f a large pool o f both types o f items over several years and directed to a
variety o f respondents from several ethnic groups and different age levels has yielded
consistently low positive biserial correlations between items and total score. In the
present study, for example, item-total score biserial correlations (removing the contribu-
tion of each item to the total score first) averaged .33 after the elimination of one bad
item (N = 374 young Navajo males). This suggests that there i s some generality to the
attribute a t a fairly high level o f abstraction, but that adequate measurement requires
items tapping the widest possible range of specific situations. The form used in the
present study consisted of twenty items, with subjects given a score equal to the total
number o f internal control statements chosen. The median score fell between twelve and
thirteen.
The strongest correlation between this measure and others in our study was with the
test of aural English comprehension discussed briefly above (r = .50). Since our measure

72 american ethnologist
of locus of control i s a verbal test, this finding raised the possibility that we had not been
successful in constructing sufficiently simple items to make the test equally valid for all
segments of our migrant population. To explore this possibility, I ran an item analysis
among those Navajo subjects sc;oring in the upper half o f the measure o f aural
comprehension (N = 188). If English comprehension were a significant factor in test
performance, the resulting biserial correlations should increase, since the responses of
those with poorer language skills would be nearer random. It was gratifying to discover,
however, that these two sets of correlations were quite similar: half were within .05 of
each other, and the average biserial for those with good English comprehension was .31,
slightly below the overall average. This demonstrates to my satisfaction that the fact that
we were employing a verbal test. in our subjects’ second language did not introduce
significant intragroup bias into our results. Rather, it appears that among these migrants
good comprehension o f what i s going on around them may be a major factor in
promoting feelings o f personal control and efficacy.
For a group o f sixty-five migrants who were administered this measure a second time
after approximately six more months in Denver, the test-retest reliability was only .44. This
is lower than I would have liked, and suggests that this personality trait may be susceptible
to change under the influence o f urban experience. The direction of this change is not
consistent, however, since the correlation between this measure and time in the city for
all subjects tested is only -.05 (N = 242). It will require a longitudinal study of urban
migrant adaptation to tease out the linguistic and associated psychological adaptation that
is going on here.
As one would expect from ethnographic reports, Navajo scores on this measure were
more than a full standard deviation lower (more external) than for the matched group of
working-class Anglos. The Navajo mean was 12.8 (s.d. = 3.0), while the Anglo mean was
16.3 (s.d. = 2.5). A higher proportion o f Anglos than Indians gave an internal response on
sixteen o f the twenty items making up this test, and ten o f these differences were highly
significant (p< .01). There was only one significant reversal.

measuring achievement motivation

The final personality attribute, need-achievement, was measured by a TAT-like

projective test specifically prepared for this study. Again, the technique we used was
modeled on the one generally employed by McClelland and his associates, but modified
to fit the particular setting in which it was to be used. Briefly, we contrived a series of
situations familiar to migrants within which achievement themes might be expected to
emerge. A Navajo artist was then commissioned to draw stimulus pictures representing
these situations, and six were selected for final use. In the order of presentation, these
included a picture o f a young man speaking to an employer, a young man seated in a
classroom, a young man watching a piece of Navajo jewelry receive a prize, a Navajo
family boarding a bus, a young man speaking to an assembly of Indians, and a young man
counting a handful o f paper money.
I n all the pictures, the main character was an Indian with whom the respondent could
easily identify. Subjects were asked to make up a story for each picture presented. These
were tape recorded and later transcribed for scoring. To increase the content a set of
standard probes was used: What i s happening in this picture? What led up to this picture?
What is the young man thinking or wanting? What will happen next? How will the story
end?

urban Indian personality 73

 A scoring manual was prepared from preliminary data, with scoring criteria based on
those of McClelland (McClelland, e t al. 1958) but modified to represent culturally
appropriate achievement striving within the context o f Navajo life. A statistical analysis
of the first fifty available protocols revealed that certain scoring categories used by McClel-
land either did not occur often enough to be worthwhile including, or were internally
redundant. His thirteen categories were therefore collapsed to eight: achievement
imagery, need, instrumental activity, anticipatory goal states, obstacles or blocks,
nurturant press, affective states, and achievement thema. The definitions of these
categories were also modified so that each could be scored simply for the presence or
absence of the attribute within each story. The scoring manual was rewritten, and three
staff members scored a group of protocols independently. Disagreements were discussed
in conference, resolved, and the manual again revised. The result o f this work was that
interscorer reliability rose to an average of .91, better than the .86 average reported by
Smith and Feld for fourteen n-achievement studies (1958). As further evidence of our
success, a fourth scorer, who was trained with this revised manual for six hours, attained a
level o f 95 percent agreement with one o f the first three. One scorer also rescored a group
o f protocols three and one-half months later, achieving 94 percent agreement with his
earlier scoring. The n-achievement scores ultimately assigned to our migrant subjects
should, however, be even better than these figures suggest, since they represent a
consensus when all disagreements among scorers were discussed and resolved.
As evidence for the conceptual homogeneity of our measure and the appropriateness
of our revised scoring criteria, the contribution of each scoring category to our total score
was assessed. First, the score on that category across all six pictures was subtracted from
the subject’s total score (in order to eliminate any artifactual, built-in correlation).
Second, the category score and this revised total score were correlated. These correlations
therefore represent the ability of each category score to predict a total score based on the
other seven categories. These correlations, which are presented in Table 1, range from .38
to .93 and suggest a high degree o f internal consistency in what is being measured by
these scoring categories. The same procedure was employed to assess the contribution of
each picture to our total scores. In this case correlations ranged from .53 (Picture No. 1)
to .70 (Picture No. 2) and averaged .61 (bottom of Table 1). Obviously all pictures are
making a strong positive contribution to our index, and a t roughly the same level. This
analysis, which I believe to be unique in the development o f a projective technique for
cross-cultural use, confirms the appropriateness o f our modified scoring procedure and
the internal homogeneity of our total score.’ The validity o f the procedure has yet to be
demonstrated, although Michener (1971 ) has preliminary evidence from another study
among Navajo high school students which indicates that the measure may be a good
predictor of post high-school performance.

criterion measures

The measurement of our dependent variables, economic achievement and drinking

behavior in Denver, can be dealt with more briefly. A variety o f economic indicators were
constructed, based on BIA records and supplemented by the migrants’ job histories
wherever there were gaps. The accuracy of self-report data i s always problematic; when
both sources o f information were available, we usually found reasonable, though not
outstanding agreement. For example, for starting wages, BIA records and self-reports
correlated .70, with self-report wages averaging twelve cents per hour higher.

74 american ethnologist
 Table 1. Internal consistency o f the need-achievement measure: scoring category-to-total score and
picture-to-total score correlations*

Proportion o f Stories
Scoring Category Containing this Category Correlations
Achievement Imagery 44% .9 1
Need 20% .75
Instrumental Activity 29% .88
Anticipatory Goal States 7% .38
Obstacles or Blocks 5% .49
Nurturant Press 2% .40
Affective States 12% .73
Achievement Thema 33% .93

Proportion of Stories
Picture Containing A chie vemen t Imagery Correlations
Picture No. 1 (Supervisor) 11% .53
Picture No. 2 (Student) 48% .70
Picture No. 3 (Silverwork) 42% .5 7
Picture No. 4 (Bus) 40% .68
Picture No. 5 (Speaker) 25% .60
Picture No. 6 (Money) 40% .58

* A l l figures are Pearson productmoment correlation coefficients with total scores in which the
contribution o f the scoring category or picture has been subtracted.
For N = 121 a correlation of .15 i s statistically significant at the .05 level, one-tailed test.

For the present analysis, I have selected six measures of economic achievement which
were found in general to have the strongest relationships with other measures in our study
and to tap distinct aspects of migrant experience. Three o f these bear on his initial
experiences in the city, while the others measure parallel aspects o f his subsequent
experience: starting wage and present (or last) wage, these wages relative to a migrant’s
highest premigration wage, and initial and subsequent unemployment rates.
Bureau o f Indian Affairs personnel keep a running, day-by-day record o f their efforts
to get a new migrant settled into his first job and make subsequent entries whenever he
comes in for help (usually because he lost his job) and at the time of a six-month
follow-up contact. Thus the acxuracy o f measures o f a migrant’s initial experience i s
generally excellent. Subsequent experience measures, though more often based on
self-report data, bear on recent or current aspects of the migrant’s life, and are therefore
probably susceptible to minimal distortion.
The measure, “Initial and Present (or last) Wage,” in dollars per hour, is straight-
forward. An interesting indirect measure o f a migrant’s degree of satisfaction with his
wages in Denver i s based on a comparison between these and the highest wage he reported
having received before coming to the city. Those whose wages are as low or lower than
what they made before migration might be expected to doubt whether the move was
worthwhile. In fact, this condition i s strongly related to drunkenness, which would seem
to support our interpretation (Graves 1970). The measure, “Initial % Employed,” is based
on the migrant’s first six months in the city, if he stayed a year or more, or the first half

urban Indian personality 75

 of his urban experience if he stayed less than a year. In parallel fashion, the measure,
“Subsequent % Employed,” i s based on his last six months in Denver, or the last half if he
remained less than a year.
Arrest rates in the city serve as our major measure of migrant drunkenness. These have
the virtue of being “non-reactive” (Webb e t al. 1966) and extend over the entire period
each migrant remained in the city. Almost half o f the Navajos in our sample were arrested
at least once while in Denver, almost always for a drinking-related offense. Self-report
data on drinking rates and drinking-related problems were also collected, but for a
number of reasons these have not proved to be as useful. Not the least o f these is that half
the self-reports were collected after the migrant had returned to the reservation and
therefore may reflect a post-migration adaptation.
The use of arrest rates places some limitations upon the analysis, however. In the case
of the Navajo (and probably all urban Indians), the assumption that the greater the
drunkenness the greater the arrest rate i s not unreasonable, given the high percentage of
arrests that are for drinking-related offenses (Graves n.d.a) and the predominantly public
form that Indian drinking takes (Snyder 1968). But because the relationship between
drunkenness and arrest is probabilistic rather than mechanical, group rates will be more
dependable than individual rates, making correlations between a migrant’s personal
attributes and his frequency o f arrest unstable. This problem i s exacerbated by the fact
that many migrants remain in the city only a few weeks or months, so that the temporal
base on which individual rates might be calculated is often very small.
As a result of such considerations, our analytic procedure has been as follows. First,
migrants are divided into distinct groups on the basis of certain characteristics we are
interested in, whether it is on the amount o f money they are earning or on the strength of
their achievement drive. Then, for each group, an arrest rate i s calculated by dividing the
total number o f arrests received by that group’s members by the total number of years
they spent in Denver, converting the resulting index to a standard rate per 100,000
man-years in the city. Thus we have figures which are comparable between various groups
of migrants regardless o f their size or the length o f their stay. These figures appear to be
accurate within about three percent, the extent of our sampling error.’

migrant personality and economic success

We can turn now to an empirical t e s t o f our first hypothesis, namely that those
migrants with an extended future time perspective, strong feelings o f personal control
over their destinies, and high achievement motivation will do significantly better
economically in the city than those who do not possess this syndrome of middle-class
personality traits.
The relationship, or better the lack of relationship, between these three personality
measures and our six most powerful indicators of economic success is presented in Table
2. In the top half of this table correlations have been calculated using the entire migrant
sample o f 259 subjects. Half o f these eighteen correlations are negative, their absolute
level averages only .06, and only one achieves the .05 level o f statistical significance, but
in the opposite direction predicted by our hypothesis. (We can expect one such
correlation out of every twenty run to achieve this level of significance by chance alone.)
We conclude that our data provide no empirical support for the thesis that an absence of
middle-class personality traits i s contributing to Navajo marginality in the economic
sphere. And whether we look a t the migrants’ initial achievement in the city or their
ultimate success, the picture is the same.

76 american ethnologist
 Table 2. Pearson correlations between three measures o f migrant personality attributes and six
measures of economic success i n Denver.

Future Time Locus o f Achievement

All Subjects (N = 259) Perspective Control Motivation
~

Starting Wage .oo .07 -.11

Starting Wage Relative t o
Highest Premigration Wage -.09 -.03 -.02
Initial % Employed .07 .01 -.06
Present Wage .04 .09 -.07
Present Wage Relative t o
Highest Premigration Wage -.05 -.01 .oo
Subsequent % Employed .16* .03 -.11

Only Subjects Entering Skilled or Semi-Skilled Jobs (N = 1 1 7 )

Starting Wage .18* .08 -.14

Starting Wage Relative t o
Highest Premigration Wage -.03 .01 .13
Initial % Employed -.24* .17* -.06

Only Subjects Holding Skilled or Semi-Skilled Jobs ( N = 130)

Present Wage .04 .06 -.07

Present Wage Relative t o

Highest Premigration Wage -.14 -.02 .14
Subsequent % Employed .15 .o 1 .01

*Statistically significant at less than the .05 level, two-tailed test.

As has already been noted, about half o f these migrants were unable to command
better than manual day-labor jobs in the city. It could be argued that for this level of
employment, personality variables such as we were measuring are irrelevant, but become
important only at the point where a person brings attributes other than his brawn to the
industrial system. To test this possibility, these correlations were rerun, using only those
subjects who were holding skilled or semi-skilledjobs..’ These correlations are presented
at the bottom o f Table 2, and again provide no support for a “culture o f poverty’’
hypothesis. Because the sample size i s now smaller (between 117 and 130), the magnitude
of random variation in these correlations increases, so that their average absolute level is
now .09. But seven out o f eighteen are negative, and only three attain the .05 level of
statistical significance. The largest o f these, a -.24 correlation between “Future Time Per-
spective” and “Initial % Employed,” i s in the opposite direction predicted by our hypo-
thesis. The other two correlations are weak, .I 8 and .I 7 respectively; both bear on initial
economic experiences, and both disappear completely when we look at the corresponding
correlations among subsequent experiences. If the “culture o f poverty” idea has any
merit, the influence of these personality variables should increase over time, and the gap
between the wages offered those with middle-class personality traits and those without
such traits should widen. Our data provide no evidence for such a process: there are no
significant relationships between these personality measures and subsequent economic
experiences, and the absolute value of these nine correlations averages only .07.

urban Indian personality 77

 One potential muddling factor in this analysis is that migrants were interviewed after
they had been in the city different lengths o f time, so that these personality measures are
possibly the product of different amounts o f urban exposure. Correlations with months
in Denver at the time o f the interview were also close to zero, however (.09, -.05,-.05
respectively), so that controlling for this factor would have made no difference in our
results. Whatever effect the city may have on migrant personality traits, this effect is
probably neither uniform nor unidirectional. Again, a longitudinal study would be
welcome.
Whether we consider these personality traits to be relatively enduring and to have
preceded the migrant’s urban experience a t about the same level we subsequently
measured them, or whether they are believed to be modified by urban experience, this
lack o f relationship with a highly salient body o f economic experience i s an important
piece of negative data. It can be dismissed only if the psychological measures themselves
are found to be worthless. Given the many difficulties involved in cross-cultural
personality assessment, this possibility could not be ignored until we found a
theoretically sensible body of relationships with other measures. But we did.

migrant personality and arrest rates

Let us proceed to a test o f our second hypothesis, namely that the above-mentioned
syndrome of personality traits will be associated with lower arrest rates among the
migrants. We know now that these traits could not be the indirect result of their
contribution to better economic achievement in the city. But these personality traits
might still provide certain psychological controls against drunkenness. All are presumed
to be related to a tendency to delay gratification in the pursuit o f long-range goals; heavy
drinking would seem to be the antithesis of such delay.
The relationship between these three personality measures and arrest rates i s presented
in Table 3. Each proved to have a substantial empirical association with arrests, but in
two of the three cases they are in the opposite direction anticipated. Those migrants with
the strongest feelings of personal control over their destinies have an arrest rate only half
as high as those who feel themselves a t the mercy o f fate: 59,000 to 1 18,000 arrests per

Table 3. The relationship between three personality measures and Denver arrest rates.

Proportion Arrest rate per

o f all migrants 100,000 pop.

Future Time Perspective

a. extended future time perspective 52% 98,000
b. restricted future time perspective 48% 76,000

Internal versus External Control

a. feelings o f internal control 50% 59,000
b. feelings o f external control 50% 1 18,000

Achievement Motivation
a. high need-achievement 51% 86,000
b. low need-achievement 49% 64,000

78 american ethnologist
 Table 4. The interaction between three personality variables, present wages,
and Denver arrest rates.

Proportion Arrest rate per

o f all migrants 100,000 pop.

Locus o f Control:

a. Present wage higher than $ 1 . 3 5 per hour and

(1) feelings o f internal control 25% 42,000
(2) feelings o f external control 21% 64,000
b. Present wage o f $1.35 per hour or lower and
( 3 ) feelings of internal control 21% 122,000
(4) feelings o f external control 21% 239,000

Future Time Perspective:

a. Present wage higher than $1.35 per hour and
(1) restricted future time perspective 24% 56,000
(2) extended future time perspective 24% 55,000
b. Present wage of $1.35 per hour or lower and
(3) restricted future time perspective 26% 1 18,000
(4) extended future time perspective 26% 223,000

Achievement Motivation:
a. Present wage higher than $1.35 per hour and
(1) low need-achievement 25% 45,000
(2) high need-achieve me n t 25% 57,000
b. Present wage o f $1.35 per hour or lower and
(3) low need-achievement 23% 1 18,000
(4) high need-achievement 21% 199,000

100,000 man-years in Denver. But those migrants with the more extended future time
perspective and greater achievement motivation have arrest rates about 20,000 higher
than those who display less of these middle-class personality traits.
This apparent empirical paradox i s resolved when we control for the economic
pressures these migrants were experiencing. The relevant data are presented in Tables 4, 5,
and 6. Looking first at these personality measures in interaction with the migrant’s
present wage (Table 4), the relationship between all three psychological traits and arrest
rates i s weak or completely ahsent among migrants who are doing relatively well in the
city. Their major influence, apparently, i s restricted to those who are having economic
problems. These features of personality do not contribute to a migrant’s economic
success in the city; rather, they serve him as a basis for evaluating his economic failures.
Looked a t in this way, the other end of the “Locus of Control” variable assumes
greater significance. Feelings of external control, or fatalism, have been suggested as one
important aspect of a syndrome of traits, loosely labelled “alienation,” which can be
thought of as the psychological analogue of Durkheim’s structural “anomie” (Seeman
1959). Those migrants who receive relatively low wages and also harbor such feelings of
helplessness and hopelessness about their lot have an arrest rate of 239,000 per 100,000
man-years. By contrast, those migrants who feel they have a measure of personal control
over their future appear to accept poor wages with less disturbance, perhaps because they
can anticipate doing something about it. Many return home. But while they remain in the
city, their arrest rate is only 122,000 per 100,000 man-years. This i s high but

urban Indian personality 79

 substantially lower than the arrest rate o f those with feelings of external control. Thus,
while an internal locus of control does not help a migrant achieve better wages, an
external locus of control may make him feel worse when his wages are poor.
The influence of an extended future time perspective and high achievement
motivation, though in the opposite direction, i s equally logical. Again, both personality
variables appear t o have very little or no relationship to arrest rates as long as things are
going well for the migrant. But among those having economic difficulties, these traits of
personality appear critical. Migrants with relatively poor wages who tend to look well into
the future apparently feel their misery more keenly than those who live only from day to
day. Their arrest rate is over 100,000 per man-years higher. High achievement motivation,
which raises the value a migrant places on success, increases the disjunction created by
failure. So those migrants with high need-achievement who hold relatively poor jobs have
an arrest rate over 80,000 higher than those who experience similar failure, but who have
a lower motivation to succeed.
Tables 5 and 6 present two replications o f this analysis, using “Present Wage Relative
to Highest Premigration Wage” and “Subsequent Unemployment” as alternative measures
of a migrant’s economic success in the city. Note that regardless o f the measure used, the

Table 5 . The interaction between three personality variables, relative wages,

and Denver arrest rates.

Proportion Arrest rate per

o f all migrants 100,000 pop.

Locus of Control:
a. Present wage higher than highest premigration
wage and
(1) feelings o f internal control 26% 40,000
(2) feelings of external control 21 % 38,000
b. Present wage same or lower than highest premigration
wage and
(3) feelings o f internal control 26% 97,000
(4) feelings of external control 27% 227,000

Future Time Perspective:

a. Present wage higher than highest premigration
wage and
(1) restricted future time perspective 24% 32,000
(2) extended future time perspective 25% 46,000
b. Present wage same or lower than highest premigration
wage and
(3) restricted future time perspective 26% 142,000
(4) extended future time perspective 25 % 192,000

Achievement Motivation:
a. Present wage higher than highest premigration
wage and
(1) low need-achievement 26% 40,000
(2) high need-achievement 23% 39,000
b. Present wage same or lower than highest premigration
wage and
(3) low need-achievement 22% 96,000
(4) high need-achievement 29% 182,000

80 american ethnologist
 Table 6. The interaction between three personality variables, unemployment,
and Denver arrest rates,

Proportion Arrest rate per

o f all migrants 100,000 pop.

Locus o f Control:
a. Full employment during last six months
or l a s t half o f stay and
(1 ) feelings o f internal control 34% 42,000
(2) feelings of external control 34% 89,000
b. Some unemployment during last six months
or last half of stay und
(3) feelings of internal control 17% 139,000
(4) feelings of external control 15% 21 3,000

Future Time Perspective:

a. Full employment during last six months
or last half o f stay ond
(1 ) restricted future time perspective 31 % 52,000
(2) extended future time perspective 37% 7 1,000
b. Some unemployment during last six months
or last half o f stay and
(3) restricted future time perspective 18% 127,000
(4) extended future time perspective 14% 242.000

Achievement Motivation:
a. Full employment during last six months
or last half of stay and
(1) low need-achievement 37% 65,000
(2) high need-achievement 34% 59,000
b. Some unemployment during last six months
or last half o f stay ond
(3) low need-achievement 12% 65,000
(4) high need-achievement 17% 149,000

some pottern of relationships is found. This i s even true of unemployment during the last
six months or last half o f the migrants’ stay i n the city. Since about two-thirds of these
Indians were fully employed by the end of their stay, obviously there were many who
were dissatisfied with their wages despite job stability. But even here these personality
measures have their major influence on arrest rates among those experiencing some
unemployment. Given the fact that these three economic measures have only a low
relationship with each other (averaging .19), the use of each results in a quite different
group of migrants being classified into various patterns. Thus we have an excellent
example of what Lazarsfeld (‘l966:190-196) refers to as “the interchangeability of
indices,” and one which assures that we are not ascribing theoretical importance to what
is really no more than a fluke. Furthermore, since the contribution o f any one migrant to
these group arrest rates is relatively small (the three chronic drunkards have been removed
from all analyses), these findings cannot be the result o f the behavior of a small handful
o f migrants. Rather, we are dealing with a general process which is being displayed by a
large number o f Indians in surprisingly consistent fashion.
The probable direction o f causality within these complex realtionships should be
touched on briefly. We have been able to demonstrate a complete lack of association

urban Indian personality 81

 between these three personality variables and economic achievement. Thus economic
failure cannot be said to give rise to the psychological traits which lead the migrant to feel
this failure so deeply. Their source must be looked for elsewhere. But it would also seem
unlikely that drunkenness has much feedback effect on these personality traits either. My
main reason for this conclusion is a logical one: why should economic failure
accompanied by drunkenness give rise to high achievement motivation? Or to an
extended future time perspective? Since both attributes only increase the drunkard’s
misery, by simple principles o f learning theory one would expect them to be eventually
extinguished. It therefore seems likely that these personality attributes were acquired
before the migrant arrived in the city and are themselves an important causal factor in his
subsequent adjustment. Feelings o f personal inadequacy and fatalism are more likely to
have been reinforced in Denver by the drunkenness which they apparently promote. So
they may form a part o f a deepening cycle o f relationships through time. However, only a
longitudinal study o f changes in these personality traits during the first years i n a new
urban environment could adequately tease out these potential feedback effects.
Finally, the consistent pattern of relationships between these three personality
variables in interaction with three quite distinct measures o f the migrant’s actual
achievement in the city provides a substantial basis for accepting the measures themselves
as valid. If these personality tests were worthless, it i s highly unlikely that scores on all
three would be strongly associated with arrest rates only among migrants experiencing
economic difficulties in the city. I f tests are yielding random scores, then associations
with other measures will also be random. But we observed an identical pattern of
relationships repeated nine times. Rather than discarding our measures, i t looks like the
“culture o f poverty” theory itself i s in need o f revision.

summary and conclusions

This paper has brought empirical evidence to bear on a critical set of hypotheses
concerning the sources o f minority group poverty in the United States, which have
profound policy implications with regard to the most appropriate strategies to be taken
for i t s alleviation. Briefly, both the “assimilation” hypothesis which traditionaily
underlies our faith in the American “melting pot,” and the “culture of poverty”
hypothesis which anthropologists and other social scientists have recently proposed to
explain assimilation failures, contend that minority group economic success--and thus
social mobility-depend on the acquisition by these groups o f a core set of middle-class
personality traits. A t the heart o f this “work ethic” i s a faith i n our capacity to overcome
all barriers and a dedication to the achievement of excellence. A t the behavioral level this
results in a tendency to look ahead, plan, save, and work hard for long-range goals. Many
theorists have considered this set of personality predispositions as the psychological
keystone in the capitalist structure.
Measures o f three aspects o f this syndrome o f personality traits were developed
specifically for use among Navajo Indian migrants to Denver: an extended future time
perspective, feelings o f personal control over one’s destiny, and achievement motivation.
Given the intellectual climate at the time this research project was initiated, I expected
these personality traits to be associated with better job performance in the city. I was
wrong. I also expected that in addition to their contribution to higher wages, these traits,
linked so closely as they are conceptually with a tendency to delay gratification, should

82 american ethnologist
serve as psychological controls against heavy drinking. Thus they should contribute to
migrant adjustment in this critical area of behavior as well. Again I was wrong.
None of these personality measures shows any association with better economic
performance in the city. Rather, they appear to serve the migrant as a basis for evaluating
his economic failures. Those migrants receiving poor wages in the city who have strong
feelings of fatalism appear to be resigned to continuing failure, and their arrest rates are
100,000 higher than those with similar economic experiences who believe they are
capable of influencing their future. An extended future time perspective and a strong
achievement motivation have a similar relationship to arrest rates among those with
economic problems, but in the opposite direction anticipated originally. Those with more
extended time perspective have higher arrest rates if they are doing poorly in the city,
perhaps because they project their present lack o f success into the future or suffer from
greater anxiety than those who live day by day. And those with high achievement
motivation feel more keenly the deprivation of economic failure than those less strongly
committed to succeed. In both cases, therefore, the motivation to get drunk is raised.
The applied implications of these findings are obvious. Rather than spending their time
on a nonproductive effort to foster a middle-class personality among Indians, the Bureau
o f Indian Affairs and i t s teachers would do well to devote more of their energies to
providing these people with marketable skills. And the rest o f our society must generate
more Indian job opportunities. For a middle-class personality i s adaptive only within a
structural setting which permits the attainment o f middle-class goals. Otherwise such
psychological traits tend to be maladaptive and to create additional adjustment problems
for those who have acquired them. Interestingly, identical empirical findings are available
for urban blacks (Parker and Kleiner 1970).
Finally, if these middle-class personality traits are not functionally linked to successful
economic performance, and if their absence is not a source o f adjustment problems when
wages are relatively good, we need to reassess the high emotional value we attach to them.
Accumulating evidence such as has been presented in this paper gives added weight to
anthropologists’ traditional dedication to the principle o f cultural (and psychological)
relativism and argues for i t s acceptance as fundamental national policy. For it appears
that minority group critics of educational programs aimed at changing their way of life,
rather than that o f the dominant society, have a good deal o f empirical support.

notes
‘The research reported in this paper was conducted under the auspices of the Institute of
Behavioral Science, University o f C.olorado. Initial support was provided by the University’s Council
on Research and Creative Work, followed by a three-year grant from the National Institute of Mental
Health (1-R 11 MH-1942-01, 02, and 03). The freedom t o complete the present analysis was made
possible by a special fellowship from N l M H (1-F03-MH-43, 794-Ol), and is gratefully acknowledged.
Because this research was designed i n part to serve as a field training laboratory for social science
graduate students at Colorado, a great many people have participated in the data collection and
analysis: Dr. Braxton M. Alfred, Avery Church, Mary I. Collins, William Hozie, Dr. Kenneth
Kuykendall, Dr. Robert D. McCracken, Dr. Romola McSwain, Dr. Bryan P. Michener, Dr. Duane
Quiatt, Carl Shames, Dr. Peter Z. Snyder, Minor VanArsdale, Dr. 0. Michael Watson, Dr. Robert S.
Weppner, Dr. C. Roderick Wilson, and Dr. Suzanne Ziegler. Although I must bear responsibility for the
interpretation of data presented here, all have contributed t o m y thinking in many ways, for which I
thank them.
This paper received the 1971 Stirling Award in Culture and Personality from the American
Anthropological Association.
2Actually, only about half o f these “returnees” were selected i n a truly random fashion. Before
we began our fieldwork, we had n o idea how difficult i t might prove t o locate specific returnees on the
reservation. Consequently, during our first two seasons we simply divided the reservation into areas

urban Indian personality 81

 and attempted to locate what returnees we could from each on a “quota sampling” basis, making an
effort not t o interview only the most readily available. By our third season, we had learned how to
proceed and could select a random sample o f comparable size from the total l i s t o f returnees we had
obtained from BIA records. On dozens o f economic, social, and psychological variables, these two
returnee samples differed significantly no more often than would have been expected by chance. They
were therefore combined, and all are treated as a single random sample.
3The Spanish-American sample was part of a parallel study of migrant adaptation being
conducted within this group by other social scientists at the Institute o f Behavioral Science. I want t o
thank the project director, Prof. Robert C. Hanson, and Dr. Gabino Rendon (1968), who did much of
the interviewing, for having graciously made these data available t o us for comparative purposes.
4 l am grateful t o Dr. Philleo Nash, Commissioner o f Indian Affairs at the time this project was
initiated, for having given i t his official support, and t o the staff of the Denver Office o f Employment
Assistance (BIA) and i t s two successive directors, Dr. Solon G . Ayers and Maynard Gage, for the many
ways in which they facilitated our work.
’The important role o f police records in this study will become apparent in the text following. I
wish t o acknowledge m y profound debt to former Denver Police Chief Harold A. Dill for his
cooperation and t o Police Captain Dora1 E. Smith for the time he devoted t o searching his records for
us.
6David McClelland is best known among those working on achievement motivation (McClelland
1953; McClelland e t al. 1958; McClelland and Winter 1969), while Julian Rotter has led the group
investigating feelings o f internal versus external control (Rotter 1966, 1971). Research on time
perspective and the closely related concept of delay o f gratification has no single intellectual leader,
although the work o f Walter Mischel is particularly noteworthy and includes cross-cultural
investigations (Mischel 1958, 1961 ).
7 l have often collected a similar sample o f past events, scored i n the same way. Empirically, an
extended past time perspective tends to be associated with an extended future time perspective. Thus
we may speak of an “extended” versus a “restricted” perspective rather than the “past,” “present,” or
“future” orientation often posited by other theorists (see Graves 1962).
‘This is a 30 item test, based on the Michigan Test o f English Language Proficiency, Forms A, B,
and C for foreign students, developed by Charles C. Fries and Robert Lado at the English Language
Institute, University o f Michigan. Each item consists o f three pictures, and subjects select the one
which best corresponds to the English sentence read. Only items appropriate for Navajos were used,
and item analysis further reduced the original pool o f items from sixty t o thirty. The average
item-total score biserial correlation for this final set (after first subtracting the contribution o f each
item from the total score with which it was correlated) was .58.
’The rationale and scoring manual for this test is contained in Michener (1965). Because these six
pictures were deliberately Navajo in content, the test was not administered t o our Anglo comparison
sample. A revised form for use in an interethnic high school setting is available in Michener (1971). N o
Navajo-Anglo differences were found, but this may be the result of differential dropout rates between
the two groups, so that those Navajos who remain are a highly select sample. For a similar finding, see
Rebousin and Goldstein (1966).
‘‘A more detailed exposition of this procedure, which includes multiplying the returnee sample by
three to permit population estimates and correct for differential rates o f return home, is contained in
Graves (1970:41-42). Three chronic drunkards, with over twenty arrests each, were also routinely
eliminated from all analyses reported i n this paper and elsewhere. Although their inclusion usually
increases predicted relationships, they add an element of instability which might, on occasion, result in
spurious findings. I wanted to be sure that any relationship reported was the result o f many individual
cases falling in the expected direction, rather than just a few.
“When correlating our personality measures with measures of initial economic experience, only
those subjects entering skilled or semiskilled jobs were used (N = 117). When looking a t the
relationship between these personality attributes and subsequent economic success, only those holding
skilled or semiskilled jobs at the time o f our interview (or at the end o f their urban stay for returnees
interviewed on the reservation) were employed (N = 130).

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Date of Submission: May 1,1973

86 american ethnologist